Imagine you lived in Rome in 65AD under the reign of Emperor Nero. As you stood singing the opening song in church on Sunday morning, armed soldiers kick the door down and arrest the Christians inside. Many were thrown into the arena to fight wild beasts and gladiators. Others were dressed in clothes covered with tar, hung up on trees in Nero’s garden and set on fire as living-lamps at night. The Apostle Paul was beheaded and the Apostle Peter crucified upside down. Shortly after this Nero killed himself and the persecution stopped… for 30 years at least.

Then along came Domitian – the year is 95AD. If you thought Nero was bad, Domitian was worse. He called himself “Dominus et Deus” – “LORD AND GOD”. He demanded that people everywhere empire worship him and say “Caesar is Lord” – or else! The Christians could not do this because “Jesus is Lord” and so a second more terrible persecution began. During this time the last living apostle, John, was in Turkey and arrested. He refused to deny Jesus, and so he was put in a pot of boiling oil and roasted alive. However, miraculously and annoyingly for the Romans he didn’t die. Then he was exiled to die on an island called Patmos, 30 miles out to sea – it was like Alcatraz, an inescapable prison. And it is there, at a time when Christians are being murdered, and churches are being crushed by armies, that the Book of Revelation was written to give hope.

The message of Revelation is very helpful for us today. Sometimes it looks like life is terribly out of control – it’s a bit like being on a terrifying rollercoaster, you cannot make it stop even though you want to get off! Sometimes it looks like God and His plans are failing! That’s maybe what John felt and thought down on the beach watching the sun rise on the Sunday morning that Revelation begins. But at this the worst of times for the church, John receives a vision from a friend he hasn’t seen in 60 years. Jesus in all of His heavenly majesty appears – and it knocks John over in awe! He writes v.17-18: “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me saying: “DO NOT FEAR; I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades”. Jesus is LORD AND GOD. He holds the keys of life and death, He’s in charge, He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands! Not Domitian!